Economic Logic, Too

About Me

I discuss recent research in Economics and various events from an economic perspective, as the name of the blog indicates. I plan on adding posts approximately every workday, with some exceptions, for example when I travel.

Wednesday, February 13, 2013

The attitude of students towards college choice is starkly contrasted across continents. While I certainly tend to over-generalize in the following lines, let me highlight a few differences. In Asia, students are very aware of the ranking of universities and strive hard to pass entrance exams to the highest ranked institutions. After that, students do not work much towards learning. All that matters is the signal that you got in. In Europe, students typically go to the local university and are left to fend for themselves. Attrition rates are high, the surviving students are quite good, and there is limited variance in student quality across institutions. In the United States, students are willing to travel far to study, and the selection of the institution depends on reputation, cost and amenities. Having a nice campus, quality dormitories, extra-curricular activities and especially college sports is deemed very important, aspects that do not matter at all in Asia and Europe. Why?

Brian Jacob, Brian McCall and Kevin M. Stange try to offer an hint of an answer by looking at the demand side for colleges. They use detailed data from high school classes in 1992 and 2004, match this with college characteristics and estimate a discrete choice model. The results are more damning than my ramblings above. Except for the top students, high school graduates do not care about academics at all. All they want is excellent "college consumption amenities." And this likely explains why they learn so little while in college. Their focus is on the university as a consumption good, not an investment good. And colleges have responded by devoting to amenities half the resources they devote to academics, producing a generation of well-entertained know-nothings.

I think the UK is like Asia then. At least it used to be. I remember being told when I was in high school - this is the hardest you'll have to work, you won't have to work as hard when you get into university. It was all about getting the highest A level grades to get into the best university. With the spread of higher education there is probably a bigger component going to local institutions. But in the US too, I think there is an elite market to get into Harvard, MIT etc. and then a broader one just looking for the "college experience" and then a very large one going to the local community college who don't care about the amenities either. So maybe a single market model is the wrong idea?